Globes prep reaches full-tilt

Hosts Fey, Poehler 'plan' spontaneity

Beverly Hills, Calif. - It's a few days before the Golden Globes, and the Beverly Hilton International Ballroom is having a little work done.

Crystal chandeliers are being hung from the ceiling, where they'll illuminate stars including Jennifer Lopez, George Clooney, Dustin Hoffman and dozens more Sunday night. Workers on cranes are rigging up the 16 cameras that will capture the action inside the ballroom for worldwide TV audiences, and seating charts are being meticulously planned for maximum celebrity interaction.

But by showtime, the ballroom will be beautiful, and veteran live-TV producer Barry Adelman and director Louis Horvitz say they'll be ready for whatever the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards may bring.

"Because of Tina and Amy, we immediately have a fresh start," said Adelman, executive producer of the show.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler - both Golden Globe nominees for lead actress in a TV comedy - are hosting the show. Producers gave the pair free rein to put their comedy touch on the ceremony.

"They've been here, so they didn't need a lot of guidelines," Adelman said. "The hardest part is to find the time within everything that's going on to allow them to shine, which we have found, and they will shine."

The hosts said in an interview that they're hoping for some spontaneous moments to riff about onstage.

"That would be really great, so we're trying to plan that," Poehler said.

"We have a lot of spontaneous things planned," Fey added.

The Golden Globes have long trumpeted themselves as a harbinger of the Academy Awards, but the Oscars, irked at the Globes' efforts to ride on their coattails, keep speeding up on the awards calendar. Thursday, for the first time, the Oscar nominations were announced before the Globes ceremony.

The Golden Globes already have more than their share of detractors, and the Oscars' move-up was seen by some as further dimming interest in them. (The Orange County Register's Barry Koltnow called the Golden Globes "the clown car of movie awards . . . more irrelevant than ever.")

Adelman said something unexpected is guaranteed to happen during the three-hour show - and that's what brings audiences to the ceremony.

"It's the Globes, so something's going to go wrong," he said. "It just means anything can happen - and always does."